The Front Range Voluntaryist Issue #3

Issue #3 Free! — unlike the “free” politicians promise May, 2017 US Bombs Syria in Retaliation to Alleged Chemical Attack, Column by Will Porter (pg. 2, 3, 4) The Media Cheerleaders of War, by Mike Morris (pg. 4, 5) Is Morality Absolute or Relative?, article by "Gned the Gnome" (pg. 6) Taxation Means War, by Mike Morris (pg. 7, 8) Interview with a Praxeologist, Jessica Carswell on utility (pg. 8) Collectivist Comrades March the Springs, by Mike Morris (pg. 9, 10) What is Voluntaryism?, answered by Richard Ellefritz (pg. 11) Wilson’s War and its Legacy, Essay by Will Porter (pg. 12, 13, 14) The Basics of Self-ownership, Liberty 101 column by J.C. Simpson (pg. 14) Dog Park Authoritarianism, Article by Nick Weber (pg. 15) What the State is, by Murray Rothbard (pg. 16) To call, or not to call, the police, Story by Joel Aigner (pg. 16, 17) How Modern Vaccination Practices Are Destroying True “Herd Immunity”, by Graham Smith (pg. 18) A confused anarchist?, by Robert Castle (pg. 19) Is Manitou Springs Losing Its Soul to Politics?, article by Paotie Dawson (pg. 20) The Mutual-Exclusivity of Fascism and Capitalism, By Chase Rachels (pg. 21) The Fascist Creep of the Alt-Right, article by J.W. (pg. 21, 22) 1  US Bombs Syria in Retaliation to Alleged Chemical Attack, A World of War Column by Will Porter Trump gave in to pressures that his predecessor was able to resist in 2013. In response to allegations of the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government in the country’s ongoing civil war, President Trump has ordered a series of airstrikes on Syrian targets in what could be an overture to regime change. The strikes were carried out late Thursday night, hours after Russian deputy Ambassador Vladimir Safronkov warned of "negative consequences" if the administration chose to go through with prior threats. Though the Russians were informed of the strike in advance, this small gesture likely will not mitigate the damage done to US-Russian relations by the attack. “We describe that attack as a flagrant violation of international law and an act of aggression,” Safronkov said at an emergency session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Friday. This takes place just one week after the Trump administration announced that it would no longer seek to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, claiming that the Obama administration missed the opportunity to do so. “There is a bit of political reality with respect to where we are now, and where we were in the last administration,” Press Secretary Sean Spicer said at a briefing, adding that the US goal in Syria is now to defeat the Islamic State. That didn't last long, as we’re back again to the same mad scheme to overthrow the Syrian government. The prior administration flirted with the idea, but never fully it carried out—and for good reason. America’s recent record with regime change is dismal, with the violent consequences of the US-led regime changes in Iraq and Libya still grinding on today. The Obama administration, of course, did for some time arm and train Syrian rebels in an effort to hasten Assad’s defeat, but never carried out a full-scale assault on the regime. This became especially difficult after direct Russian involvement began in the conflict in 2015, risking a confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. At one particularly crucial moment in the summer of 2013, however, President Obama did precisely what Trump just failed to do: he waited. After a chemical weapons attack on rebel-held areas in Ghouta, a suburb east of Damascus, a chorus of outrage erupted from all quarters of respectable society to demand action against Assad. Obama had set down a “red line” in a 2012 speech, one year to the day before the Ghouta attack, which warned Assad that the use of chemical or biological weapons would trigger direct US action in Syria. That ultimatum contributed to the pressure exerted on the president in the wake of the attack. John Kerry, then Secretary of State, in a speech soon after the incident claimed absolute certainty of the Assad regime's guilt. Kerry uttered the words “We know...” no less than 35 times in that speech--but he didn’t know! Later revelations would cast serious doubts on the Assad regime’s responsibility for the attack. Carla del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general and member of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV three months before the Ghouta attack that there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” that the rebels were responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria, specifically the use of sarin gas. Sarin was also allegedly used in the recent April 4 chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhun which prompted US retaliation Thursday. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, in two pieces published in the London Review of Books, gives substantial evidence to suggest that the rebels carried out the Ghouta attack in order to cross Obama's "red line" and trigger US intervention against Assad. First, the conclusions of American intelligence agencies: “In the months before the attack, the American intelligence agencies produced a series of highly classified reports, culminating in a formal Operations Order – a planning document that precedes a ground invasion – citing evidence that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had mastered the mechanics of creating sarin and was capable of manufacturing it in quantity.” Hersh cites a high-level intelligence officer who said the attack “was not the result of the current regime” in Syria. (continued on pg. 3) 2  (continued from p. 2) Another former senior intelligence official said that the Obama administration actually altered information “to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analyzed in real time.” A chemical weapons expert formerly of the Iraqi military, Ziyaad Tariq Ahmed, was also known by US intelligence to be affiliated with the al-Nusra Front rebel group and to be operating in Ghouta at the time, according to Hersh's reporting. Tariq was regarded a high-profile target by the American military, and was suspected to be involved in the production of sarin. Moreover, in spring of 2013, US intelligence learned that the Turkish government was working with al-Nusra, the Syrian al-Qaeda affiliate, to develop a chemical weapons capability. “Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there,” another retired intelligence official told Hersh. “Erdoğan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line,” the former official said, referring to a rebel chemical attack which would be blamed on the regime. This would not be the first time Turkey would have considered covert intervention in Syria. In March of 2014 a leaked recording was publicized wherein high-level Turkish officials, including Turkey's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, are heard discussing an idea to stage an attack on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, a shrine in Syria which by treaty is Turkish territory. The staged attack would justify an escalation in Turkish involvement in the Syrian war. “We’re going to portray this [as] al-Qaeda,” Feridun Sinirlioğlu, a Turkish diplomat, said in the recordings (translation of the transcript). “There’s no distress there if it’s a matter regarding al-Qaeda. And if it comes to defending Suleiman Shah Tomb, that’s a matter of protecting our land.” While the Obama administration maintained Assad's culpability in the Ghouta attack, instead of ordering military retaliation Obama struck a deal with Assad, brokered by the Russians, for Syria to hand over its entire chemical weapons stockpile. This was completed in the summer of 2014 to the satisfaction of the State Department. Until the April 4 gas attack, all indications were that Syria no longer possessed such weapons. The former president's decision not to bomb may have had something to do with the ultimately flimsy case against Assad for the Ghouta attack. Then director of national intelligence James Clapper once even interrupted the president's daily intelligence briefing to tell him the Syrian intel was “not a slam dunk” (a reference to George Tenet, CIA director under the Bush administration, who vouched for faulty intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq War). Obama, despite his public claims to the contrary, at some point may have concluded he simply did not have the evidence that would justify full-scale military action in Syria. President Trump is now asserting the same level of certainty regarding the recent chemical attack that was put forth by the Obama administration in 2013. “There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons,” Trump said at a briefing after the incident. We've heard this before— not only in relation to Syria—and in this case the administration barely waited 48 hours before launching a bombing raid in retaliation, hardly enough time to conduct a thorough investigation. By April 6, the United Nations was still finalizing the decision to even begin a probe into the attack. While the perpetrator of the sarin strike is yet unknown, there are at least some plausible reasons to be skeptical about Assad's responsibility. Former CIA and DIA officer Phil Giraldi claims to have military and intelligence sources on the ground in Syria who tell him the Assad regime did not carry out the April 4 attack. “Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear,” Giraldi told radio host Scott Horton in an interview. “People in both the [Central Intelligence] Agency and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this.” Giraldi's sources say the Syrian military struck a cache of sarin gas controlled by the rebels in the town of Khan Sheikhun, an account also put forward by the Russians. “There was indeed an attack, but it was an attack with conventional weapons, with a bomb,” Giraldi said. Another strange aspect of this incident is its timing. Assad would seemingly have little incentive to carry out such an attack just as the US announced its intention to abandon plans for regime change. Some commentators have suggested Assad was “testing” the Trump administration with a provocative act, but this seems a reckless gamble from which little could be gained. (continued on p. 4) 3  (continued from p. 3) Overall, the war in Syria has been going well for Assad, raising additional questions about motive. What tactical or strategic benefit could the use of chemical agents have for the regime at this point? Fortunately, some lawmakers are voicing skepticism toward the administration's quick rush to judgment about the April 4 sarin attack, and some of Giraldi's sources said they would like to come forward publicly with what they know, but that may not be enough to prevent further military action against the Syrian regime. At Friday's emergency UNSC session, Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said more strikes were still on the table. "We are prepared to do more, but we hope it will not be necessary," Haley said. The Pentagon also said it was investigating the possibility of Russian complicity in the gas attack, ratcheting up tensions yet further. In a dark irony, at least nine civilians, including children, were killed in Thursday's attack, a barrage of nearly 60 Tomahawk missiles. It is a stark illustration of the futility of “humanitarian” intervention, where civilians must die for the sake of their own protection. Welcome to the fifth term of the Bush administration; the swamp is here to stay. [Will Porter is an independent journalist and contributor at antiwar.com] The Media Cheerleaders of War, by Mike Morris If you’re lucky enough to avoid television, you wouldn’t have to bear the mainstream media’s unrelenting, daily cheerleading for war. While it’s all awful, garbage reporting, the Fox News barrage embodies the macho, hyper-masculinity of the military, and heartlessly adjust their voices to an enthusiastic tone of war when they get excited about the thought of ravaging others’ lives. They speak of the next war as if it’s inevitable (and with states it is), and all we can do is prepare for it. War, to them, is a given—a cause everyone should be behind. They promote it like it’s as simple as an upcoming anticipated victory by the local football team. They show bombings, dying children, maps of airfields they claim harbor enemy weapons, and try to get average citizens on board with their war-hype to get us sort of psychologically on the same page of world events. Constant nuclear scares with North Korea are aired; Russophobia continues tension with our old Cold War enemy; alternative news sources like Wikileaks (and this one?) are “non-state hostile intelligence services” (according to Pompeo), and exposing state-crimes is painted as treasonous. Overall, endless fear mongering reigns throughout their programming, naming off every make-believe boogeymen to justify their own existence. They fervently speak of how weak and vulnerable the enemy is, and what a cakewalk it would be to stomp all over them; or how cool their war-toys are, showing off battleships cruising in looped videos, and the awesome powers of their state vs. the others, who would be “obliterated”, “crushed”, or “annihilated”, or some other exaggerated word were they to face off with the U.S.A. It’s completely unashamed American exceptionalism. It’s just fine when we bomb someone – and “we” is the whole mistaken view that the people are the same as “their” government – and it is terrorism when they do it. They’re [Hannity] shouting, “America’s Back!”, “America’s Back!” Apparently wars of aggression, intervening hegemonically around the world, inserting the Empire into every nook and cranny of the globe, etc., is “American.” Would they know, as its so-called representatives, that if anything is “American” it would be non-interventionism, maintaining a peaceful civilian life, free-trade with other nations, opposition to standing armies, resistance to taxation, etc? Pundits waste time arguing who’s biased and who isn’t, when none of them are biased for liberty. They’re all statists of different stripes, disagreeing only on the minutiae of government operations, but proposing no principled opposition to its foundation. The State is taken for granted; “democracy” is a must-spread. They speak of how innovative and advanced “we” are; the wasteful, wonderful things done with the property stolen from us; the refashioning of our money into bombs and bullets. One talking head at Fox, Greg Gutfeld, had the audacity to call the recent Afghanistan cave-bombings “beautiful.” It’s truly sickening to see these people get-off on war, as they clearly do, and to know that millions tune in to follow their take on foreign military activity. Any American rebelliousness has been replaced by unquestioned allegiance to the State. They say things like “we’re going to find you, kill you, you can’t hide, run.” This militarized-talk is even used by local police departments, like the Lake County Sheriff’s Office... (continued on p. 5) 4  ...has done in a recent video threatening drug users in Florida, which subsequently went viral for its showing of force fit for a police state. Smaller local papers like the Gazette get in on it too. They report on events such as the Space Symposium last month and are completely comfortable pushing the same fallacious narratives as the statists and warmongers. As the Gazette’s Tom Roeder reports at the Space Symposium, “locals were buzzing about…how they could offer a financial boom in Colorado Springs.” Here come the economic fallacies used to support the idea that taxing people and redistributing the funds to unprofitable “private” military-industrial companies “creates jobs” and makes us richer. So full of it they are. The American Empire – if it ever hasn’t been – looks to be ramping-up for war. Trump is showing that he’s willing to make use of the military, as can be expected when you give a government monopoly powers over “defense,” and that he has less tolerance for America’s supposed enemies than his predecessor. After dropping the largest non-nuclear conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal—dubbed “the mother of all bombs” (MOAB)—for the first time on the already war-torn Afghanistan in what was said to be a persuasive demonstration to the regime controlling the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump said, to paraphrase, that “North Korea is a problem…and will be taken care of.” The exceptionalism is flagrant: “North Korea is a prison camp,” but America must have no people locked in cages; Assad gassed his own people, but forget about U.S. use of Agent Orange or other chemicals; they killed a few babies, but forgot about the number of women and children killed by Americans in the past decade across the Middle East. Need I say more? We’re given names, pictures, and stories about the fallen American soldiers to invoke anger; the foreigners remain the nameless, of lesser value than the American lives lost in the alleged “fight for freedom.” It’s the U.S. Government committing these atrocities, not the American people—the hapless taxpayer who is forced to participate in wars he finds unjust. What we’re seeing is the “blowback” of U.S. foreign policy: the creation of terrorists around the world, others who are tired of being punked around by the U.S., etc. The only way out of the mess is to stop military-interventionism around the world, but such remains their solution to preserving the Empire’s reach and domination. The deep state appears in panic that the public isn’t buying into their lies anymore. The new CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, nominated by Trump, spoke to reaffirm that the CIA is not an agency that engages in its own agenda, such as foreign regime change, but one that has the American people’s interests in mind; they should have their hearts too, because they’re the good guys. As Pompeo blasts Julian Assange in his first speech (against free-speech) to the public as CIA Director, saying he is “not the slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom,” as if they are, seemingly everyone’s an enemy of the State. They’re trying hard to maintain an image different than the popular, accurate depictions of these agencies as unchecked, legalized murderers. He tells us, "regardless of what you see on the silver screen, we do not pursue covert action on a whim without approval...” “I know there will always be skeptics and we need to build trust in them,” Pompeo said, also citing the Office of Inspector General as something that reigns them in. But we all know, there are no “checks and balances” in government. The once relatively-limited executive branch has become a “murder dispensary,” as my friend Pete calls it, intent on operating outside of the system that supposedly imposes boundaries on their power. Pompeo, like others, thinks we’re doing these things in the “national interest,” “just doing our jobs.” They appear concerned their credibility is being damaged, knowing they exist solely because the people tolerate it, so paint the Mannings, Assanges, and Snowdens of the world as traitors deserving of capital punishment. But there is some hope. Evidenced by the comment sections of local police departments across the country, the tides might be turning on their unchecked legitimacy as monopolists who have a special right to rule us. People that aren’t even ideologically motivated libertarians who hold specific principles of liberty can be seen denouncing their crimes through their own common sense logic toward the absurdities of caging men for any number of laws growing on the books daily. Governments rule by fear and must instill that fear in their subjects to stay afloat—since all states require at least passive public approval. Hence the fearful reaction of “but without government…” as a seemingly natural reflex among the slaves. Peaceniks long for a day when government struggles to maintain its perceived essentiality among the public. To some extent, it’s happening. 5  Is Morality Absolute or Relative?, article by "Gned the Gnome" Religious conservatives and liberals often argue over whether morality is absolute (universal) or relative. Conservatives believe that morality can only come from their favorite religion, which must be accepted 100% or else the world degenerates into hopeless global immorality and chaos, which then justifies the conservatives' use of force to "save" civilization. Many liberals believe that there are no objective or universal moral principles, that anything goes and it's all a matter of individual choice. This justifies anything, including the conservatives' paranoia, reinforcing the vicious circle. 1. The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP): Do not initiate force or fraud upon anyone else's person or property. 2. The Equal Rights Principle (ERP): We all have equal Inherent Rights, no privileged classes, no Divine Right of Kings. 3. The Individual Sovereignty Principle (ISP): We each have the right to do whatever we want as long as we do not violate NAP or ERP; and, individuals create organizations (including governments) and endow them with specified limited privileges, not the other way around; such organizations do NOT have Inherent Rights. Inherent Rights can only be Negative Rights, not Positive Rights. That is, you are not obligated to do How do we resolve these conflicting positions and anything good for me, but you must not do avoid falling into more worldwide holy war? anything bad to me. Positive Rights must be obtained by consent as Contract Rights, e.g. by Very simple - as often happens, both sides are purchase, barter, or other arrangement. Thus, the partially right. There is a very small absolute core of right to Life can only be properly understood as a Universal Common Law aka Natural Law aka Negative Right - I cannot force you to provide me Objective Law, which consists of the musts (actually with food, health insurance, shelter, or anything the must nots). The rest of the various "moral" else I need to live; I can only insist that you must principles proposed by different religions, cultures, not murder me. nations, etc. are all relative and are just a matter of That's the gist of it. Much more detail is at cultural beliefs and norms; these are only shoulds, http: //nap.nfshost.com and there's an email link not musts. Conservativesdon't know the difference; they can't even distinguish between God's Law (the for comments, feedback, etc. There's room for musts) and man's law (the shoulds). They think that improvement, so I'd really appreciate constructive to save the world they must convert everyone at suggestions by those who really understand and gunpoint and force them to follow all the laws of agree with these Principles. Thank you. their religion. In forcing their shoulds (their laws) upon everyone else, they are violating the musts (God's Law). They are thus supporting "Satan" (coercion) and rejecting God. ["Gned the Gnome" is an activist in the libertarian/patriot community in Colorado Springs and Texas.] Liberals simply need to learn that there are some things (like stealing) which are inherently and objectively wrong (the must nots), regardless of what people think. This should be easy for them to agree to in exchange for no longer having anyone's shoulds imposed upon them. “The right to private property is an indisputably valid, absolute principle of ethics and the basis for continuous ‘optimal’ economic progress. To rise from the ruins of socialism and overcome the stagnation of the Western welfare states, nothing will suffice but the uncompromising privatization of all socialized, that is, government, property and the establishment of a contractual society based on the recognition of the absoluteness of private property rights.” - Hans-Hermann Hoppe So, what are these absolute, universal core principles of Universal Common Law, the musts? 6  Taxation means War, by Mike Morris Well, not war in the sense that the people are finally fed up with their compulsory contributions to the death-cult that is the U.S. Government, but in that aggressively-appropriated tax-funds are likely to go toward further aggressive uses. Giving an institution built on aggression and invasion of property rights the sole legal authority to steal, which is accurately the definition of the State—a territorial monopolist of force—will lead to an expansion and concentration of power, as we have witnessed in this failed, though perhaps noble, utopian American experiment in “limited-government.” As Murray Rothbard has said, “government is inherently inflationary.” Give government all the guns, and they will point them at you. Give central banks the power to make money with their monopoly over it, and they will do just that. If all our taxes were paid directly from our checks, or better yet, a check you had to write to the government at the end of the year, it’s unlikely that our tolerance would be as high as they’ve gotten away with anyway. Therefore they utilize the old trick of inflation to get us with the more insidious and illusory inflation-tax, where rather than needing to tax us from income withholding, they create money from thin air and steal resources from the economy anyway for themselves. Money is no exception to the laws of supply and demand though, in which an increase in the supply (the definition of inflation) will lower the price of money. An increase in money units thus raises money-prices, i.e., lowers the purchasing power of money in regard to other goods and services in the economy. The U.S. government is now unrestrained in how much resources it wishes to rob from the private markets, of which production is for consumer needs, and redirect and divert those resources toward building up the war machine. It is the very purpose of taxation to produce things (for government purposes) that we otherwise might not voluntarily fund, such as Trump’s call to increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal, of which I believe a fraction of the supply could obliterate mankind. One rejection of a market for defense is that it would be provided in insufficient quantity. We must have a State to decree, violently, what it is we must pay for our own protection. Only collectivists who believe production should be in the name of “society”, i.e., for the State’s ends, would anyone wish to take away the ends of individual’s subjective preferences. Stating that no one would supply these people with as much resources, i.e., million-dollar tomahawk cruise missiles, if not coerced is an argument against statism. Others are foolish enough to say things like “we should be able to choose where our tax dollars go”, without realizing, precisely, that achieving this would be no taxation whatever; everyone decides, voluntarily, how they wish to use their property; the engage in the.. ..democracy of the market; “voting with their dollars”, so to speak. Thus, it’s much easier to make war when you can externalize the costs onto the taxpaying public; much harder when the losses are your own. Hence why a stateless society would mean less, not more, war. It is the difference between conjectural bandit gangs and the absolute genocides and prolonged conflicts seen between states. As anyone should be able to see at this point, the DOD is an outright gang of aggression. It should have been called the Department of Offense long ago. Creating enemies are the world, refugee crises, etc., all serve to make us insecure; the plundering of resources, and “lost” money by the Pentagon make us poorer; the military’s consumption of capital, yet production of nothing in return for those resources, serves to make us poorer as a whole. If the service of defense was beholden to market forces, like profit and loss, supply and demand, etc., rather than being a coercive monopoly and provision of the State, then there’s much greater chance that people would find it intolerable and cancel their support and membership for it. Such is not a possibility under the State to boycott it. As of now, hapless taxpayers like myself, who are threatened with violence and cages should we resist funding their wars, are unable to discontinue payments once we see how the “defense” department uses such funds. I won’t even begin to list the atrocities of the U.S. Military. Needless to say they are many. Reports on the recent strike in Syria, killing children, for instance, would not be condoned (at least by me), and less likely conducted, security were private. So, being horrified upon seeing children being sprayed with water after being attacked with chemical weapons, as the news dramatically showed, and with a narrative all ready to go that it was President Bashar-al Assad against his own people (think: the accusations of Saddam Hussein and WMDs which justified the Iraq invasion in 2003; or the instant blame on Osama Bin Laden for the September, 11th attacks which he denied), Trump called in an airstrike which is already reporting civilian casualties, including children. The same disgusting, vile, warmongering neocons from Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, John McCain, etc. have been on the tube since I was a teen now. Hannity exclaims proudly that “America’s back”, to refer to the President shedding blood; an old pastime tradition of his predecessors, I suppose. I guess Obama’s 26,000+ bombs-dropped in 2016 wasn’t good enough for the warhawks; “we” need to step up our game and spread the our military hegemony even further. The supposed Party of “small government” is about growing the military, and has been for some time. There is no more anti-war, anti-New Deal “Old Right”, but they’ve accepted the whole government package at this point, from Social Security to the socialist military. 7  As long as there are states, and territorially large ones at that which have more resources to exploit, there will be a tendency to make war and limit liberties. Of course we must ask: why do states get to go ungoverned? Why do they get to be anarchists but not us? Thus, the logical conclusion of centralization in general is to have a world government. If one doesn’t find that terrifying, and the end of humanity (though, some environmentalists might think it will be the protection of Earth at last), then I have no words for you. And if they don’t think we should have a world government, why do they stop at national borders in their decentralization? Why not decentralize as far as possible, down to the individual? The centralization of power needs to be reversed for a total decentralization. Anyone on board with that, if not accepting anarchist conclusions, is an ally in the ideological battle to beat back the rise of statism. Starting with regions, onward to cities and neighborhoods, we could achieve individual liberty. As our columnist Will Porter believes, and is the the position of many prominent libertarians, war is the primary issue to oppose as it is in war which the State goes stronger and domestic liberties are taken away at home, and in which a reversal in the post-war peacetime almost never comes; it even gives us the centrally-planned state like the programs of the New Deal seen in the interwar period, or the post-9/11 surveillance state we live in today. So while I meant taxation means war in the sense that people who are able to tax will build powerful militaries with the funds, and use this armies to stand over us, taxation should mean war on our end too: that we resist the slavery that is taxation and stop aiding, though involuntarily, the crimes of the U.S. government. If the service of defense was beholden to market forces, like profit and loss, supply and demand, etc., rather than being a coercive monopoly and provision of the State, then there’s much greater chance that people would find aggression intolerable, and the aggressors would be out of business. I’d submit that all defense spending would be just that in a market for security: defense spending. With a State such as the U.S., it’s always preparation for another blunder overseas. While it’s true we need to secure property rights as a prerequisite for economic prosperity and personal liberty, it does not logically follow that it must be monopolistic. We see where this has gone: from a “limited government” experiment to the biggest State the world has ever seen; an Empire of unprecedented, epic proportions that threatens the world-over, including its own citizens. We see today, a century that was dominated by the casual-correlated existence of central-banking and total-war; one that replaced gold, a restraint on their revenue-growth, with permanently-depreciated paper-monies states use to expand their budgets, debts, and military excursions. [Mike Morris makes The Voluntaryist happen] [Questions to a praxeologist] The Voluntaryist: What is the significance of emphasizing that our subjective preferences are ordinal and not cardinal? Jessica Carswell: It means that you can't make interpersonal utility comparisons and therefore can't objectively prove that any forced exchange or redistribution is for the "common good". To do that, you'd have to be able to measure total utility: i.e. utility gained minus utility lost. To measure, utility would have to be cardinal. It also explains why people exchange. Because each party ranks the goods or services received more than the goods given up. Which has implications on where prices come from - that it's subjective value, not some "objective" or inherent value that set prices. The fact that you can't make interpersonal utility comparisons is basically the case against the state in its entirety. Even if you want it to do "good" things through violent intervention/redistribution, you can't prove objectively that these things are "good" overall. You might personally believe that it's "moral" to steal from the very rich to help the very poor, or to violate someone's rights to some small extent to prevent a severely bad outcome (e.g. borrowing a gun against a person's will to prevent a mass murder). But you can't prove objectively or scientifically that by doing so you are achieving a common good outcome. These are win-lose cases and you can't objectively measure the win against the lose to ascertain whether you have a positive net outcome. The Voluntaryist: Beautiful response which basically refutes socialism and the labor theory of value in short order. So, to get it straight, viewing rankings as cardinal would allow for a sort of utilitarian common-good justification for theft in seeing Person A valued his 1st-ranked preference only 1.1x more than the 2nd, and so therefore it would be just and moral, and not a loss of "social utility", then, to transfer this to Person B who supposedly values it more, and therefore this is why preferences must be seen as ordinal – 1st, 2nd, 3rd – as opposed to 1st being valued 1.5x more than the 2nd, and so forth? Is that a way to put it? Jessica Carswell: Yeah basically cardinal utility would allow for some kind of objective measurement. Ordinal does not. It's not an assumption. Preferences are ordinal. 8  Collectivist Comrades March the Springs, Mike Morris Since Trump has taken office, socialists of all types have taken to the streets of the Springs for various causes. Among the accurate military - megachurch - ultra-conservative image Colorado Springs retains can be found ponds of leftism, too. A few groups in town are Colorado Springs Socialists, comprised of revolutionary Marxists; Colorado Springs Antifa, the “anarcho communists” who associate with them; Unite Colorado Springs, the progressives; and Showing Up for Racial Justice; etc. They’re mad too, but one must be careful as such groups often offer as a solution many of the causes to our very problems: statism. Their idea of justice, as well as the conception of liberty, for any of these groups is opposite the libertarian conception of both; and is that of having the [positive] “right” to other people’s property, rather than to be free from such aggression. “Justice” is when we aren’t free to exclude people from our property (discriminate) and our private lives as we see fit; or when people are punished for the non-crime of tax-evasion; liberty is when “rights are guarantees” to other people’s property (as Bernie Sanders puts it) to be provided by government, rather than the freedom from giving up your property to government. Freedom is slavery — you know the rest. They hopelessly ask for justice from a monopolist state, which economic theory tells us will rise in price and deteriorate in quality over time. Like Keynesian central bankers attempt with economic magic tricks, they ask of statism something it will never deliver. They can’t be trusted with these words. “Progress” is when there’s more violations of property rights than last year; when there are more taxes, more regulations, and more crony government. Additionally, “social-justice” exceeds questioning the State in importance. It is no wonder we are in conflict: millions of many preferences are forced to accept the rule of one centralized government. But we’ve almost forgotten that’s why. “Social justice” issues, that place transgender bathrooms rights above criticizing the more heinous actions of states, shows the problem. Just as the anti-immigration crowd wants to use government to restrict immigration when it’s in that government’s interest to come at the expense of nations, cultures, tribes, families, and destroy liberty, most remain proponents of more government. Since the “Hands Off Syria” protest put on by Unite CS was pertinent to the issue of Trump bombing Syria, we decided to go down too, wishing to join the anti-war chorus, ourselves holding signs reading “the U.S. Government is a death cult.” Rather than talk to us, we were instead immediately treated as enemies. A few voluntaryists including myself were standing ahead of the protesters before they crossed the street, who were made up in large part by covered-faced “anarcho communists” waving their black and red flag. We kept our message simple, which one would think they’d have found unobjectionable. They however were instantly triggered upon seeing us, eerily giving up their sheep-like group-chant to frame us as “fascists” (which defined by them is anything they don’t like, which is everything). “Good-night, alt-right!”, they repeated to drown-out anything we had to say, somehow equating us as fascists for holding a “taxation is theft” sign, to which they shoved us for when verbalizing. Would they know National Socialism was socialism, and not capitalism, which is a lack of political authority? The tension was the sentiment of the population, also seen in punk subculture: national socialism bad, international socialism good. Che Guevara and Hammer and Sickles are acceptable and cool; Hitler paraphernalia and we stomp your skull in. (Many “Antifa” are punks). I am not apologizing for the former, but pointing out the double standard. While our utmost cause is individual liberty, nationalism is preferable to communism or a world government; many countries are preferable to a single, global one. They think Bernie Sanders’ are preferable to Ron Paul’s, though. An online manual on forming a local Antifa group says “most activists are anarchist, although a few are Maoist...the movement is predominantly Marxist.” Maoists!? That’s too funny to even rebut. But we, the people who want collectivists to leave us alone, are the fascists, right? Got it. Funny the “anti-fascist anarchists” hang out with the socialists in an “alliance of the left in Colorado Springs”, as the Colorado Springs Socialists have called for. If a democrat’s idea for what they want to do to a population are for those under a specific state’s territory (as Bernie Sanders is not offering free education to the world), and not those outside it, how is this not national socialism? The New Deal, widely hailed and cited as a leftist success against the market they think caused the Depression, was essentially America’s National Socialism, i.e., fascism. At best, the U.S. is a severely hampered market economy; at worst, it’s fascist. We agree. But it certainly isn’t the bastion of capitalism it’s thought to be, as they repeatedly speak of it as. While there is the recent rise of the so-called “alt-Right” upon Trump’s entry, who even claim libertarianism at times, there appears a resurgence of the radical, discontent, violent anti-capitalist left, no longer contained to the big cities known for it. Though Trump supporters and right-wing socialism should be found intolerable too, they appear as well intolerant and hostile to any ideas outside their own, though holding no real principles; and despite maintaining the contrary as an inclusive, diverse bunch. As with us, they persistently demonstrate their unwillingness to engage in reasonable argumentation, opting for yelling things instead. 9